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Botto Italian Bistro in Richmond, Calif., boasts 1,083 scathing
reviews on Yelp as well as a glaring one-star rating. And the
restaurant’s co-owners, Davide Cerretini and Michele Massimo,
couldn’t be more proud.

That’s because, after claiming that Yelp manipulated Botto
Bistro’s reviews in order to sell them ads, Cerretini and Massimo
have sought, in protest, to become one of the site’s worst-rated
restaurants ever.

Having spent $270 in advertising on Yelp for months, Cerretini
and Massimo said their positive reviews suddenly
plummeted as soon as the ad dollars dried up. And so roughly
six months ago, they decided to take matters into their own
hands, offering a 25 percent discount to any customer who gave
the restaurant a one-star rating.

Eager diners flocked to Yelp in droves: “The restaurant is way
too clean and servers had great attitudes in this hidden gem --
WTF!” wrote one reviewer, Mick L. “The food was cooked to order,
presented quickly and with the smell of fresh Italian herbs
wafting up in your face. What a total disaster.”

While the concept of inviting negative feedback may sound
counterintuitive, Cerretini told the San Francisco Chronicle
that “This is the best business move I have made in years.”

The influx of reviews -- some scorching, some satirical, some
sympathetic -- serve to totally disarm what he perceives as
Yelp’s corrupt template, Cerretini says. Additionally, after
having gone viral, the offer has broadened the restaurant’s
awareness and garnered a fiercely loyal customer base. Business
is up 30 to 40 percent, he said.

Yelp, predictably, was not amused by the offer. The company,
whose headquarters are located just 15 miles from Botto Bistro,
fired off a letter warning Cerretini and Massimo that soliciting
reviews -- be they positive or negative -- violated its terms of
service.

Though the worst outcome, as Cerretini sees it, would be Botto
Bistro’s removal from the site altogether -- which is one he’d
happily welcome. “If I don’t follow their guidelines, what are
the consequences? Am I going to jail? Or am I going to be removed
from the listing? So that’s the point,” he said.

Botto Bistro’s clever protest arrives on the heels of a federal
appeals court ruling that Yelp’s alleged practice of manipulating
ratings in order to sell ads does not amount to extortion so much
as “ hard bargaining,” which -- much to the
dismay of small business owners across the nation -- is
perfectly legal.

A spokesperson for Yelp told Entrepreneur.com that the site "has
never & will never [manipulate] ratings in order to sell
ads."